Six Characteristics of a Great STEM Lesson

—Getty

By Anne Jolly

June 17, 2014

STEM is more than just a grouping of subject areas. It is a movement to develop the deep
mathematical and scientific underpinnings students need to be competitive in the 21st-
century workforce.
But this movement goes far beyond preparing students for specific jobs. STEM develops a
set of thinking, reasoning, teamwork, investigative, and creative skills that students can use
in all areas of their lives. STEM isn’t a standalone class—it’s a way to intentionally
incorporate different subjects across an existing curriculum.
Here’s a quick rundown of the STEM acronym:
Science: The study of the natural world.
Technology: One surprise—the STEM definition for technology includes any product made by
humans to meet a want or need. (So much for all technology being digital.) A chair is
technology; so is a pencil. Any product kids create to solve a problem can be regarded as
technology.
Engineering: The design process kids use to solve problems.
Math: The language of numbers, shapes, and quantities that seems so irrelevant to many
students.
STEM lessons often seem similar to science lessons and experiments, and in some ways,
they are. After all, genuine science experiences are hands-on and inquiry-based. But if you
look at the basics of an “ideal” STEM lesson, you’ll see some substantial differences.
Here are six characteristics of a great STEM lesson. I hope you’ll use these guidelines to
collaborate with other teachers and create lessons that apply technology to what students
are learning in science and math (and other subjects as well).
1. STEM lessons focus on real-world issues and problems. In STEM lessons, students
address real social, economic, and environmental problems and seek solutions. My biggest
“aha” STEM moment came when I moved to a new position and faced a class of science
students who had given up on school. I had the class identify a real-world problem right
there on campus, and suddenly we found ourselves head over heels in a STEM project—
before the familiar acronym had even burst onto the scene. See Real World STEM
Problems for some suggestions for projects students might focus on.
2. STEM lessons are guided by the engineering design process. The EDP provides a
flexible process that takes students from identifying a problem—or a design challenge—to
creating and developing a solution. If you search for “engineering design process images”
online, you’ll find many charts to guide you, but most have the same basic steps. In this
process, students define problems, conduct background research, develop multiple ideas for
solutions, develop and create a prototype, and then test, evaluate, and redesign them. This
sounds a little like the scientific method—but during the EDP, teams of students try their
own research-based ideas, take different approaches, make mistakes, accept and learn from
them, and try again. Their focus is on developing solutions.
3. STEM lessons immerse students in hands-on inquiry and open-ended
exploration. In STEM lessons, the path to learning is open ended, within constraints.
(Constraints generally involve things like available materials.) The students’ work is hands-
on and collaborative, and decisions about solutions are student-generated. Students
communicate to share ideas and redesign their prototypes as needed. They control their
own ideas and design their own investigations.
4. STEM lessons involve students in productive teamwork. Helping students work
together as a productive team is never an easy job. It becomes exponentially easier if all
STEM teachers at a school work together to implement teamwork, using the same language,
procedures, and expectations for students. If you want a jumpstart on building specific
student-teamwork skills, contact me and I’ll send you a draft of a student teamwork
document.
5. STEM lessons apply rigorous math and science content your students are
learning. In your STEM lessons, you should purposely connect and integrate content from
math and science courses. Plan to collaborate with other math and/or science teachers to
gain insight into how course objectives can be interwoven in a given lesson. Students can
then begin to see that science and math are not isolated subjects, but work together to
solve problems. This adds relevance to their math and science learning. In STEM, students
also use technology in appropriate ways and design their own products (also technologies).
Best case scenario: Involve an art teacher as well. Art plays a critical role in product design.
Teams will want their products to be attractive, appealing, and marketable. When the arts
are added, the STEM acronym becomes STEAM.
6. STEM lessons allow for multiple right answers and reframe failure as a
necessary part of learning. Sometimes I designed my science labs so that all teams
would replicate the same results or verify or refute a hypothesis. Students were studying
specific science content and the whole idea was to provide insight into cause and effect by
manipulating variables.
STEM classes, by contrast, always provide opportunity for multiple right answers and
approaches. The STEM environment offers rich possibilities for creative solutions. When
designing and testing prototypes, teams may flounder and fail to solve the problem. That’s
okay. They are expected to learn from what went wrong, and try again. Failure is
considered a positive step on the way to discovering and designing solutions.
Creating STEM lessons
So where can you find quality STEM lessons? An online search of “STEM lessons” will yield
plenty of results. A word of caution, however: Not everything that claims to be STEM is
actually STEM. If it doesn’t meet the criteria described above, you may want to move on.
I generally start with the following sites to jumpstart my thinking when I plan a STEM
lesson: Design Squad Nation, NASA STEM lesson, National Geographic
Education, STEMWorks, TeachEngineering, and The Air Force Collaboratory. (Please
add your own favorite sites in the comments section.)

Can’t find any lessons you like? Look at your course objectives, come up with a real world
challenge, and write your own lesson. Check out my blog posts Perfect Stem
Lessons and 12 Steps to Great STEM Lessons for some “how to” ideas. You can also get
a free “starter lesson” to introduce your students to the engineering design process by
contacting Melissa Dean. (Put “Free Launcher Request” in the subject line.)
For the ultimate resource, I invite all of you—whether or not you are STEM teachers—to join
the Center for Teaching Quality’s Collaboratory, a professional and safe virtual network to
post your ideas and questions about STEM (and other topics of interest). We’d love to share
our knowledge and experiences with you.
For those of you in the trenches, have fun creating your lessons—and thank you for being
STEM teachers.
Anne Jolly is a Virtual Community Organizer for the CTQ Collaboratory and a member of
the CTQ Thought Leaders Circle. Anne taught middle school science for 16 years in the
Mobile County Public School System and is a former Alabama State Teacher of the Year. She
is a published author and currently writes middle school STEM curriculum. Anne blogs
regularly at STEM by Design on MiddleWeb. Her Twitter handle is @ajollygal.